It is hard to see how the underlying problems in the business can be properly tackled until calm returns. Directors must be able to talk business with each other without personal hostility or mus- 653p.

something stand under-per-last 35pc.

goes Rose axes the dividend ing on whose views will prevail once the bloodletting finishes.

What will happen in the boardroom is not clear. But what can not happen is clearer.

Oates (see separate story) is no stranger to controversy. His decision to canvass non-executives for the top job when he looked like being passed over is not all that unusual or outrageously ambitious by any boardroom standards.

But his campaign has got out of hand. His later suggestion of a 'dream ticket', in which he would 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 Source: Datastream/ ICV Marks & Spencer relative to the All-Share Index become chairman and Salsbury chief executive, can only complete the breach with Greenbury, not the most emollient character at the best of times.

One or the other will have to go in the interest of boardroom harmony and conceivably both.

Greenbury has presided over a bad period in the company's life. It has underperformed High Street rivals. Its merchandising faces widespread criticism. The capital investment programme - very much a matter for the chairman - is having to be curtailed.

He won no friends by letting himself be diverted into running the inquiry on executive pay, demanding time and attention that would have been better devoted to M&S.

But the current troubles present investors with an opportunity.

Averaged out, M&S has done rather better than the market for more than 30 years. Periods of under-performance have always been followed by outperformance.

These are difficult times for markets and may well get worse. But, for long-term investors in M&S, buying on the dips has always paid.

to finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, is gloomy about growth prospects. He can envisage another half-million unemployed in Germany if interest rates are not cut.

His suggestion is a dramatic cut of 1pc on the existing Bundes-bank rate of 3.3pc.

If there is no rate cut, he says, governments should consider ignoring the Treaty rules about budget deficits. He even refers to the possible need for a 'huge' deficit.

This sort of thing is a nightmare for Wim Duisenberg, head of the European Central Bank. He said emphatically yesterday that loose monetary policy, supposed to boost unemployment, would have the opposite effect in anything but the very short term.

He must also have been disturbed by another Flassbeck suggestion - that wages should be deliberately increased to stimulate consumer spending.

If this sort of approach finds favour with the other Socialist governments of France and Italy, there will be a battle royal with the ECB. It will be keener than ever to refuse an interest rate cut.

POLITICAL problems are crowding in on the euro. Even before it is launched, the Germans suggest the Maastricht's rules about budget deficits might need to be relaxed - temporarily of course.